A landmark figure lends a hand at Yom Kippur

Sally Priesand was the first woman ordained as a rabbi by a seminary

September 25, 2012|Daniel Patrick Sheehan | In The Burbs

As historical figures go, Sally Priesand is one of the unassuming ones. Forty years ago, she made her mark as the first woman in the world ordained as a rabbi by a seminary, and as the first female rabbi in America. But talk of these accomplishments is met with a sort of verbal shrug.

"I don't think of myself as the first woman rabbi," she told me Tuesday as Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement and the holiest day of the year, arrived with the sunset. "I'm just a rabbi."

This was at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Allentown, where members of Temple Shirat Shalom in Salisbury Township hold services for the High Holy Days — the 10-day period on the Jewish calendar that begins with the new year, Rosh Hashana, and culminates with Yom Kippur, a period of fasting and fence-mending with God and neighbor.

Priesand lives in New Jersey but came to Allentown to celebrate the holidays this year at the behest of Shirat Shalom's head, Cantor Ellen Sussman. The women are old friends and colleagues who, during six years together at Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, N.J., formed the only all-female Jewish pulpit in the world.

"It's nice to be reunited with your family," Priesand said. It was a warm sentiment and matched the mood of the room where congregants mingled and exchanged greetings of "L'Shana Tova" ("For a good year").

The happy atmosphere bumped up confusingly against my own Irish-Catholic notions of what atonement ought to feel like, but the rabbi explained it nicely.

"When you say Day of Atonement, you are really saying 'at-one-ment,'" she said. "We are here to be at one with God and with each other."

It is, she added, her favorite holiday: "It's a day that says to us we get a second chance in life."

After chatting with Priesand and Sussman, I stood in the back with Elliot Gluskin of Upper Macungie Township, the temple board's vice president. He explained how the sunset started a period of fasting — no food, no water — and reflection that would extend until the following sunset.

"You are removing everything that is about you and your body," he said.

I admired the depth of the commitment. In my tradition, fasting means taking one modest meal. It used to be tougher than that, but things changed and I have never understood why.

When the service began, Sussman welcomed the congregants to the night she called "unique among all the nights of the year."

"Even the most estranged among us … wish to be in temple on the Sabbath of Sabbaths," she said.

Priesand spoke of the 10 days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur as an opportunity to make it into the Book of Life, where the names of the righteous are written and sealed.

But that task is impossible without cultivating forgiveness and changing the heart. In the words of the service: "For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones, but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone."

In short, you have to do the hard work of forgiving others and seeking their forgiveness — not just saying sorry, but meaning it.